The Night Faculty

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,


   Since I've been kind of dry and informational of late, I want to move away from that a little and give you a bit more information about how things work here at the University of Constantinople.

   The University is at such a strange level of temporal dynamics and technology as to be a near-mystical place.  It's often to tell where the technology ends and the spookiness begins.  More on this spookiness next week, you can be sure.

 
    Your spooky quotient for today will be filled by the concept of the Night Faculty.  No doubt, the idea has crossed a few of your minds that there might be an entire other society in the places that you live, societies that operate when you are sleeping, full of people who are on a different shift and with whom you never interact.  Perhaps, even, they have their own businesses, storefronts which shutter just as your eyes flutter to begin the next day.

 
   Here at the University, I know there is just such a set of people.  The Night Faculty are a group of people whose cultures or biology leave them unable to operate during the day, as most of us do.  Either they are from time streams where evolution has produced something like vampires, or they learned to exist in a nocturnal culture, or any of many other reasons.


   That might seem "freaky" or "creepy" to any of you, that in thenight there might be people who you never see that wander the halls of your workplace.  For me it is a matter of great comfort.  There is always worry that we will be attacked by some other ex-temporal force, especially the Puppeteers.  To know that at all times, our halls are stalked by creatures of daydream and nightmare is to know that we are at all times safe.


   More on the Night Faculty next week.


   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar

   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The Pinkness of the Unicorn, and Other Stories

The Invisible Pink Unicorn; Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,


   There's been quite a lot on my mind with regards to Science, experimentation, and philosophy of thought.  You can blame a couple of people I've run into around your time stream lately, who have gotten me into discussions of hypothesis testing and what makes knowledge "knowable."
   
   This post is mostly provoked by discussions of theism vs. atheism, but that question is one that I'm unwilling to settle for you.  Suffice it to say that in the time streams where there are gods or godlike beings who directly interfere with the affairs of the less powerful, I find this to be somewhat unprofessional behavior on their part.
  
   At any rate, the notion of a deity is fascinating from a Philosophy of Science perspective.  Science relies on the ability to formulate, and then test, certain hypotheses, which then allow the formulation of further hypotheses and more experiments.  By this method we have learned to push the boundaries of sentient knowledge of the universe.

Sexual Selection: Bells, Whistles, and Running Away

Image via WikipediaDear Readers,



I found this in some old notes from a past, time-normal me.  Thought you might enjoy it, if you're looking for something to read on a slow Sunday.  I was less reserved in my wording back then.

It concerns the difference between Sexual Selection (where evolution is driven by arbitrary things that males or females happen to find attractive) vs. Natural Selection (where the selected traits are determined by their ability to help you survive the environment around you).


A classic example of Sexual Selection would be birdsong.  Females are attracted to the songs of male birds, but to sing is actually quite risky for the male as it alerts predators to their location.  Your scientists think it to have evolved because it helps the males get noticed, which has a slight net benefit over how much it helps them get eaten.


Text below the cut.

   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Warfare in Space, Part 3

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,


   This is the third and final in my series on space warfare.  It has been an exciting ride, between conventional warfare in space and inertia-negated warfare, but it's time to bring it to a close with my third and final assumption, one that occurs in many of the time streams I study:


One or both of the belligerents have invented a means of traveling faster than the speed of light.

  I do not mean a vehicle that moves between points A and B while passing all the points in between, because that's going to be lead to all kinds of causality violations.  Rather, I am talking about devices that utilize either teleportation or wormholes to transfer a craft between one point in space and another in faster time than it would take for light to travel between those two points.  Ideally, the transfer would be instant.

   So, how does that affect warfare in space?

Warfare in Space, Part 2

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

  I have taken it upon myself to write a short series on warfare in space, given some attention that topic's gotten lately around the Internet.  The first in this series dealt with warfare using technology contemporaneous to you, and this second piece will operate under a different assumption.  The third, and final post in the series, will show up later in the week.

   Let's take the technology a little further into the imagination in this post.  Last time, we were bounded by the nasty problem of inertia.  Objects in motion prefer to stay that way, in the same direction, and that ruled out the kind of combat that is seen in movies like Star Wars.

   But what if you could eliminate inertia?  Would that mean we start to see X-wings that swoop down over vast battleships?  Today's assumption: A device has been invented that allows you to negate the inertia of a space vehicle.   You'd be surprised what that assumption does for the overall layout of the space battlefield.